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Avery

How is Spike picking a fight with Buffy physical abuse? Violence is pretty much the vocabulary of their relationship; they spent years trying to kill each other. He shouldn't provoke her, but when he blocks her way, she just shrugs and punches him. They've done this a million times. She's physically stronger than him. At most, she considers his provocations annoying.

I’ve been on both sides of Buffy and Giles’ issues here, and I sympathize with Giles. It can be awfully draining, frustrating, and scary to support a loved one with depression. A lot of people don't know how to help without turning into a crutch or how to take care of the person while maintaining their own emotional boundaries. Every interaction Giles has with Buffy feeds his fear that he's enabling her, and I think he resolved to leave in OMWF and feels like if he changes his mind now, he’ll never go. He’s trying to draw that boundary because he wants her to trust herself, and his timing couldn’t be worse, but he isn't infallible. Since he had to leave, I'm glad the writers went with Giles screwing up unadmirably but understandably over getting called away. Naq V qba'g guvax gung gur fubj tvirf nal perqrapr gb gur "qrcerffvba obbgfgencf!" vqrn, pbafvqrevat gur pbairefngvba ur unf jvgu Ohssl va gur svanyr naq ubj snfg rirelguvat tbrf gb uryy nsgre ur yrnirf.

I love so much that Tara stands up for herself. Leaving Willow means leaving all her friends, too, but she still has the strength to move out. Good for her. Poor Dawn has a Lifetime movie’s worth of abandonment trauma, though. :(

+1 for the loan shark because a show can never have enough terrible/amazing puns. Next on Buffy: a paper tiger! Megan Fox! Snoop Dogg!

Randy and Joan: dorky instinctive partners in demon-fighting and the light of my life. In that last scene they aren't so much kissing as they are drowning, but they have so much chemistry I want to levitate. I used to always laugh at the overdone descriptions in romance novels where the hero is, like, the eighth wonder of the world and time stops when the heroine gazes into his ~*depthless eyes*~ for the first time and forgets how to breathe. Then the camera panned around the stairs and it was like oh god what is air I UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY.

4. Hahahaha I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but I meant their angelic voices!
5. Clearly the only way to resolve this is with a shirtless walkoff.
10. It was School Hard in S2, which is always worth a rewatch. I just pulled it up on Netflix and laughed for ten minutes because Ohssl whfg fnvq, "Ab, Fcvxr. Vg'f tbvat gb uheg n ybg." LBH QBA'G FNL. Jub jebgr guvf rcvfbqr, Abfgenqnzhf??

Hmm, the short answer is that I think Joss is a brilliant writer and generally enjoy what he says, too, but some things in his work also bother me quite a lot. I'm frustrated by how he discusses those issues publicly or just doesn't seem aware of them. There can be a disconnect between what he wants the message of a story to be and what it actually ends up saying.

If everyone here wrote a list of 10 favorite things about this episode, I’m guessing that half of the lists would look nothing alike. And then if we had to make the same list a dozen times over, every item could be swapped out with something else. Right now mine are these (in five minutes, they’ll be different):

1. The newspaper Xander holds up: "Mayhem Caused: Monsters Certainly Not Involved, Officials Say"
2. The audible cricket noises after Anya says it could be bunnies
3. Giles mentioning that the police are collecting witness arias
4. Giles and Tara opening their mouths and ANGELS SOARING OUT
5. The Fabio lookalike who came to Sunnydale just to get tied to a tree
6. “Dawn’s in trouble. Must be Tuesday.”
7. Panicking Spike on the verge of songbirding and trying to kick Buffy out
8. Buffy’s full-body eyeroll when he starts singing
9. Buffy reeling off all those platitudes in “Something to Sing About” as she kills the henchmen
10. That Buffy and Spike kiss where they first met: in the alley behind the Bronze. Not the most auspicious of beginnings! She’s also not so much kissing him as performing exploratory surgery on his face. Girl I know you just want to feel something, but I am genuinely concerned that your lips will fall off. …..I am just pretending to have some measure of objective distance from this. When this aired, I made noises only dogs can hear and then dumped all my feelings into a meat grinder while sobbing, because what Joss giveth he taketh away. But what he giveth in this episode is razor-sharp and morbid and absolutely magical.

The chord changes. The color coordination. The double meaning of “Under Your Spell” and how it turns the song into an indictment. That Alyson Hannigan didn’t want to sing, but Willow also didn’t have anything to confess. Ohssl/Fcvxr/sver vzntrel BG3. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

Sometimes I feel like Joss shouldn’t say words, but I really appreciate this bit from the commentary: ”I love TV. I love what you can do with it. And to be able to go this far emotionally, and be this silly on a regular old episode of television – albeit eight minutes over – is a way of saying, "This is just an episode. This is just what we do. It's not better, it's just TV in all its glory.” Mostly because he’s right about the joys of serialized television, but also because he’s wrong. This episode does not qualify as “just TV.” This is your life getting divided into two eras: Before OMWF and After OMWF. BOMWF was Plato’s cave and I’m never going back.

And they're like, "OK, should we only put S4-S7 or do you want us to put the complete series box set?"

Hahaha! I would compromise by going with the complete series, but stacking the individual seasons so that the post-HS years are closer to my heart. That way I can commune with them for eternity (or at least until my friends rip me out of heaven, thanks guys).

Thank you, that makes my day! :) I'm mostly sad that I missed After Life this week...it's in my top 10 episodes and I was going to write a giant wall of text for it. Most of it's been covered by now, but I still kind of want to if only to keysmash about SMG and JM's faces. Like always.

LOL yes. I am partial to Buffy's drunken blergh faces, but I'm sure that during sweeps week they could make room for some special occasions, like Buffy and Drunk Spike form a rock band or Buffy and Drunk Spike visit Downton Abbey. (Now I am extra-sad this doesn't exist.)